Overhead cam, inline-four with four carburetors and four tailpipes, the Honda CB750 made previously exotic features into an affordable, reliable production motorcycle with great all-around performance and smoothness the world had never seen. The CB750 was an instant success for Honda and started the modern era of performance motorcycling. Join Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer as they discuss the origin of the CB750 and its continued influence on motorcycling.
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00:00:00This is the Cycle World Podcast. Welcome back. I'm Mark Hoyer, I'm the Editor-in-Chief, and I'm with Kevin Cameron, our Technical Editor.
00:00:08Today's topic is the Honda CB754, introduced in 1969.
00:00:14A motorcycle that invented the superbike, brought together many technologies that had not been combined into one vehicle in motorcycling,
00:00:26made a huge impression and set us on the course that we have enjoyed pretty much to this day.
00:00:33Yes.
00:00:34From a performance standpoint, I was going back through the Cycle World archives, reading the road test.
00:00:39There was a lot of good stuff in the original road test. The motorcycle made a huge impression.
00:00:46In 2010, we asked the late Massimo Tamburini of Ducati 916 fame and all those gorgeous modern era MV Augusta,
00:00:56is what the most important motorcycle in his life was, and he said it was the 1969 Honda CB750.
00:01:05He said,
00:01:06I still remember the incredibly intense emotions that the original Honda 754 generated down in my guts when she was unveiled at the Milan show in 1969.
00:01:17She was like a vision, a dream come true, the bike I never thought a motorcycle company would dare to put into production and make accessible to the general public.
00:01:26It goes on.
00:01:27It's fabulous.
00:01:29And that's Massimo Tamburini, you know, designer of the most evocative things, part of Bimota, you know, looking for, he raced CB750,
00:01:37and, you know, he did find a way to improve it, if I felt afraid.
00:01:43But I think what struck me after reading your research and doing my research was that the motorcycle represented confidence in Honda,
00:01:56confidence to combine all of this into a motorcycle that they had to know would sell, or maybe they didn't.
00:02:05You know, the first ones were sandcast, and I wonder if that was maybe a lack of confidence before committing to die casting,
00:02:13because die casting is very expensive, sand casting is less so.
00:02:17But in any case, it did, to me, represent a lot of confidence,
00:02:20and it had a lot of technological improvements in motorcycling combined into one product.
00:02:28Well, in 1967, they sent Yoshio Harada, who had been with the company since 1953,
00:02:40on a tour of the U.S., ostensibly to urge dealers to sell CB450 harder.
00:02:50Now, CB450 was the flagship motorcycle at the time from Honda, 40-something horsepower at 9,000 and 500 pounds of weight.
00:03:07And it was in amongst them in terms of quarter mile time, but it was not definitive.
00:03:12And, of course, this is mid to late 60s, so the faster Nortons didn't exist yet.
00:03:23We're talking about Bonnevilles and BSAs, and, of course, the Sportster.
00:03:30So there was the early CB450 at roughly 15 seconds ET.
00:03:36The others were high 14s, the CB450 improved.
00:03:42But, again, it was not a definitive statement from Honda, match this.
00:03:50Well, any time you have to send someone out to convince a dealer to sell something harder,
00:03:55you better talk about the actual product.
00:03:59What is it bringing?
00:04:01What Mr. Harada noticed was what people were riding.
00:04:04And their attitude toward what they were riding.
00:04:11And, of course, at this time, all motorcycles were twins.
00:04:16Motorcycles were twins.
00:04:18And specific horsepower was, in modern terms, very low.
00:04:24All these engines were air-cooled.
00:04:26So you had to design, set the compression ratio, set the mixture rich for crossing Death Valley in midsummer.
00:04:39No detonation, please.
00:04:42So keep those warranty claims back.
00:04:45So, I would argue that it was the American side which pushed so hard.
00:04:58You can do this.
00:04:59You have created, you own the words, Honda 4 wins again, which have been instilled into the minds, not only of motorcycle riders,
00:05:12but of lots of people who never thought of a motorcycle worldwide.
00:05:17So, what were they doing with that?
00:05:21They were making twins.
00:05:23Honda 4 wins again.
00:05:26They won for the first time in 1961 and went on winning with four-cylinder 350s right into 1966.
00:05:37So, they had four-cylinders down, technically speaking.
00:05:46But if you look at CP750, what you find is that it's built out of the same Lego blocks that the twins were built out of.
00:05:59Single overhead camshaft, rocker arms with radius pads,
00:06:05and with the clearance adjusters on the end where they rattle up and down.
00:06:11And if you don't get it insanely tight, it comes loose and your valve system beats itself to pieces.
00:06:18So, do get it tight.
00:06:21And center drive by a single row, lightweight chain to the single overhead camshaft.
00:06:30And two strands of a much heavier chain from also from the center of the crankshaft to the gearbox.
00:06:43And all of these elements were present in the twins, except for the primary drive from the center.
00:06:52And all Honda had to do was say yes to Bob Hanson, who was the American Honda service training director,
00:07:04who had run his own G50 matchless racing team, who knew all these people like Dick Mann,
00:07:12who was deep in the American motorcycle tradition.
00:07:18He knew in his heart of hearts that a four-cylinder Honda would sell.
00:07:26And Honda had got their construction of motorcycles down to the point that they could say
00:07:32motorcycles cost X per pound to build.
00:07:37And it wasn't going to make a lot of difference to them, how many cylinders it had, how many rocker arms, and so on.
00:07:46So, I would argue that the Japanese just weren't yet tightly clued in on to how important quarter-mile time
00:07:58and zero to 60 time, top speed, those three numbers, were to American buyers.
00:08:05So, when they put those elements together, the result had about the same specific horsepower,
00:08:16which is, in this case, horsepower per liter, around 90 horsepower per liter.
00:08:23CB-77, the hump tanked early 60s twin, 305, many of us rode.
00:08:35Um, and the CB-350, which was later, a later arrival, 68, but still before CB-750.
00:08:47And Kawasaki Z-1, arriving in 1973, had the same specific horsepower, 90 horsepower per liter.
00:08:56So, everyone had agreed, we're going to have compression ratio around 9 to 1.
00:09:02We're going to have around 220 degrees of valve duration.
00:09:06We're going to lift the valve 25% of head diameter.
00:09:11It was a formula.
00:09:12It was a Lego block.
00:09:15And Honda put this thing together.
00:09:18They tooled it for production.
00:09:21And it may be that they, uh, made the early models using a small-scale production method,
00:09:31rather than the large-scale, low-price-per-part die-cast method.
00:09:36But when it hit the, uh, shows and the showrooms, it was a sensation.
00:09:45Four cylinders, four separate mufflers.
00:09:51It was impossible for a private citizen to own such a marvelous thing.
00:09:57So, I really feel that the Japanese were behind in their appreciation of what the American market was really like.
00:10:17The British thought they knew.
00:10:19So, they had enlarged 500 twins, the original Edward Turner engine of the late 30s, into 650s.
00:10:30Uh, Royal Infanty made a 700, 750, 835, vibrating harder and harder with every enlargement.
00:10:40Whereas, if you reconfigure as a four-cylinder with a flat crankshaft that has 180 degrees between the outer and the inner crank pins,
00:10:55primary shaking force is balanced pretty much by the fact that half of the pistons are going one way,
00:11:04and the other half are going the other way.
00:11:06It does have secondary vibration, but, uh, at this time, people were accustomed to primary shaking force of an enormous magnitude.
00:11:19Yeah.
00:11:20And, of course, uh, killers.
00:11:23I let one of my colleagues ride my, uh, 850 Commando, and, uh, he was not a vintage motorcycle person.
00:11:32It had those tennis ball-shaped grips that were already, you know, the ball-shaped grips.
00:11:37I forget what the brand was on them, but they were, had those tennis ball-shaped grips.
00:11:41And that was a, that was a smooth motorcycle.
00:11:44That was a, a 74 Commando with ice elastic, uh, vibration control, which was pretty darn good.
00:11:51And he rode it up coast highway, two miles.
00:11:55We traded on the way home from work.
00:12:00And he got off and was shaking his head and said, how do you ride that thing?
00:12:07Yeah.
00:12:08We were used to something else at the time, weren't we?
00:12:11Yep.
00:12:12So why did Honda give CB750 plane bearings?
00:12:17Well, they knew the labor cost to assemble a press-together roller crankshaft for a twin.
00:12:27Did they want to pay twice?
00:12:31When you make a plane-bearing engine, which, of course, all automobiles except for Porsches were at that time,
00:12:38uh, you, the crankshaft comes from the forge.
00:12:45It goes, it's de-scaled.
00:12:48It goes to rough machining.
00:12:51It, uh, finally goes to have its journals ground to dimension.
00:12:57Nobody touches it until it's going into the crankcase.
00:13:02So that's one point.
00:13:06There is no labor lost in pressing the thing together from a multitude of pieces.
00:13:12And then trying to knock it straight using a hammer and a dial gauge.
00:13:19Well, to quote the 1969 Cycle World test, there is much argument in favor of the plane-bearing.
00:13:25Well, the other argument is plane bearings have a great deal of damping, which rolling element bearings do not have.
00:13:38And they are extremely stiff radially, pushing, trying to push the bearing off center requires an enormous force.
00:13:48So, and it was in 1953 that Comendatore Ferrari ordered two otherwise identical V-12s built,
00:13:57one with English-made three-layer plane bearings.
00:14:03He was, uh, uh, an enthusiastic customer for these bearings from, um...
00:14:09What, Vanderbilt?
00:14:10Vanderbilt, yeah, Tony Vanderbilt, and who had licensed it from the inventors in Indianapolis.
00:14:18Uh, so, the other engine was built with all rollers, and they ran them in direct comparison.
00:14:33And the decision was plane bearings from now on.
00:14:37No more of this nonsense.
00:14:39In the USA, a few years later, it was Junior Johnson building two otherwise identical V-8s and testing them back-to-back.
00:14:48Once more, plane bearings were the choice.
00:14:52The last time rolling bearings ran in Formula One was sometime in the 60s when Porsche was still at it.
00:14:59Yeah, Honda's V-12 was running plane bearings, their Grand Prix car back in the 60s, yep.
00:15:06So, uh, Mr. Honda was known to have an affection for rolling element bearings,
00:15:12and all of their Grand Prix engines of the 1960s, including the six-cylinder 250 and the 297-6,
00:15:20were assembled from a multitude of little pieces with one-piece rods and all rolling element bearings.
00:15:29They were the most beautiful things.
00:15:33They made you, they made your heart ache in sympathy with people who could align such a thing.
00:15:43Oh, I've nearly got it.
00:15:44That last tap made it all wonky.
00:15:48I guess it's going to take another hour.
00:15:50I'll make coffee.
00:15:51I'll tell you what, just truing a twin crankshaft, like an RD or something, can make you insane.
00:15:59It can.
00:15:59It takes a special person, I won't name names, Gary Braun, to get it to beat a crank to absolute zeros.
00:16:07Everything has got to be just, just right, and then you've got to, boy, anyway, I can't imagine a six-cylinder crankshaft,
00:16:16especially with all those little delicate pieces.
00:16:18And every crank pin a different size.
00:16:21Oh, right, because they tapered out.
00:16:23The outer ones were little.
00:16:24As they got inside and had to transmit more torque and resist the vibration of the outer most pieces,
00:16:31they got bigger.
00:16:32So, it was just a tour de force of machine shop madness, of embracing perfection.
00:16:43Yeah, I'm a big fan of complicated ways to do simple things.
00:16:46You know, I really am.
00:16:48But plane bearings, man, let's do it.
00:16:51Let's just forge ahead as it were.
00:16:54So, Honda chose a plane bearing crankshaft, and it's a one-piece forging.
00:17:00And instead of, it's typical for a rolling element bearing crankshaft to be good for about 10 hours of operation at racing speed.
00:17:11Now, Kawasaki's Z1, which came out in 73, was an anomaly because it had plane bearing camshafts with little inserts in there,
00:17:22the cutest little things, and an all-roller crankshaft.
00:17:26And, of course, people didn't change those crankshafts every 10 hours because they weren't turning over 10,250 RPM,
00:17:35which was the number that Rob Muzzy said about when you get to 11,000, things go south in a hurry.
00:17:46So, and, of course, people like myself who've had pressed-together crankshafts apart in front of them in numbers
00:17:58know that when you start revving those things up, you take them apart, and there's red discoloration in the press fit.
00:18:06That is iron oxide, which is generated by minute relative movements inside the joint, which is pressed in there with tons of force.
00:18:17It can't move ever.
00:18:19And then if people also would like to go and make little welds there, that'll hold it.
00:18:25And I've seen many of those welds come in on a crankshaft repair order, and everyone's got a crack right now in the middle of it.
00:18:34So, Honda solved a lot of problems with this crankshaft choice.
00:18:41It was a wise piece of work.
00:18:44At the time, there were people, and I may have been one of them,
00:18:47who yearned inexpressibly for infinite continuation of roller-bearing crankshafts.
00:18:55But they don't make sense anymore beyond a certain point.
00:18:59I think the Honda 6 and the Honda 5 were the high-water mark of that technology.
00:19:06Just wonderful stuff if it doesn't have to run all week.
00:19:13And when they warmed those 6s up, they warmed them up in a way that made you think they got a lot of crankshafts in the truck.
00:19:20So, why two valves per cylinder?
00:19:28Well, all their production bikes had two valves per cylinder at this point.
00:19:32And their engineers had probably become familiar in university with the discovery of the aviation industry,
00:19:46that the more holes you put in the head of an air-cooled engine,
00:19:50the more cracking and deformation it will suffer.
00:19:55So, there were some four-valve aircraft engines built, but they reverted to two valves.
00:20:06And all those giant American radials, the R3350 on the B-29,
00:20:12the 1820s that powered the B-17s, all two valves per cylinder.
00:20:18And then there's another point, which I didn't know before I was sent to study this by the operational plan.
00:20:29But when Harada designed the CB450, he gave it the large valve-included angle
00:20:39and deep hemispherical combustion chamber that the earliest Honda road racers had.
00:20:46And I think it's around 78 degrees.
00:20:51And when he designed CB750, he gave it the much lesser valve-included angle of 56 degrees,
00:21:03resulting in a shallower chamber that did not need a pop-up piston dome
00:21:08to achieve a high enough compression ratio to make solid torque.
00:21:13That was the valve-included angle that Shorichiro Irimagiri had given his CR-115 and CR-149
00:21:27and also his remake of the Honda 6.
00:21:31He had given them new fast-burn combustion chambers
00:21:34as a result of his constant work with those high-rpm engines.
00:21:42Yeah, pistons were nearly flat on the CB750.
00:21:45They had a very tiny crown.
00:21:49The compression ratio was 9 to 1, which is not a lot by modern standards.
00:21:56And an under-square bore.
00:21:58Yes.
00:21:59A bore and stroke rate.
00:21:59Yeah.
00:22:0060 women.
00:22:01All of their twins were over-square.
00:22:06They had larger bores and shorter strokes.
00:22:09And so you would say to yourself, what is this pre-war bore stroke ratio doing on this 1969 product?
00:22:17Well, if for the sake of simplicity and moderate manufacturing cost,
00:22:24you're going to put your three-phase excited field alternator on one end of the crankshaft,
00:22:32and you're going to put two rows of chain, primary chain,
00:22:37plus one row of cam drive chain between the two pairs of cylinders,
00:22:43then maybe it makes sense to make a smaller bore
00:22:47and to allow airspace between the cylinders
00:22:52so that cooling air could travel between the cylinders
00:22:56and do a more complete job of cooling.
00:22:59Because what cools, air-cooled engines, is air passing through the fin space.
00:23:06And it doesn't like to.
00:23:08It would rather blow around it.
00:23:11Well, that's one reason.
00:23:12So those holes were very important.
00:23:14Yeah, it's one reason the fin pitch on motorcycles isn't fine like it is on aircraft,
00:23:20because it isn't ducted and forced to go between the fins.
00:23:23Because you see those elegant and multitudinous fins on big radial aircrafts,
00:23:28and you're just like, that's beautiful.
00:23:30And they were cut.
00:23:31Some of those fins were actually machined on aircraft engines to make them so fine.
00:23:37But you don't do that on a motorcycle engine,
00:23:38because they're not ducted, typically.
00:23:42You just have to rely on riding down the road and having it get in there.
00:23:49So that's why the pitch is wider.
00:23:51Typical fin pitch for motorcycle engines is a quarter inch.
00:23:54And if there's mud involved, it has to be bigger.
00:23:57So whereas for the B-29, whose fin pitch was like 220 thousandths,
00:24:10which is a little bit less,
00:24:12they needed 12 inches of water pressure to push enough air through their fin space.
00:24:19Those engines internally were ducted solid.
00:24:22So the only way through the engine was through the fin space.
00:24:26They needed 12 inches of water pressure in the front,
00:24:30pushing air through that space so that they could run climb power.
00:24:36Otherwise, they would have to just cruise along at low altitude and low throttle
00:24:40until they burned up enough gas to climb.
00:24:42So when you start to make large amounts of power continuously from an air-cooled engine,
00:24:51then you have to start getting really clever about the cooling.
00:24:54Whereas motorcycles, you can't go far at maximum speed without either encountering a coroner or a policeman.
00:25:01So that makes cooling a lot less formal.
00:25:07But those holes between the cylinders were very important on an air-cooled.
00:25:13You can't just have air blowing on the thing like it's a suitcase left in the sun.
00:25:19It's air's got to go through.
00:25:21So those holes were important.
00:25:23And having small enough pistons to afford those holes was also important.
00:25:27And so in the end, it didn't matter much because this wasn't an engine that was struggling for the last horsepower.
00:25:36It was a 90 horsepower per liter moderate engine.
00:25:42And in the CycleWorld test, it said that it was in a very mild state of tune.
00:25:48Yeah, not a lot of...
00:25:49Which is why it was easy to ride.
00:25:50Yeah, not a lot of overlap.
00:25:51But it performed better.
00:25:57You know, it was an inline four.
00:25:58It revved higher.
00:25:59It was smooth.
00:26:00It gave this sensation to riders that they had never experienced before.
00:26:05I want to read about Larry Lilly.
00:26:10So we did a 25th anniversary story.
00:26:13Because we haven't talked about the Triumph,
00:26:14the British coming up with their sort of half-hearted multis.
00:26:20Oh, dear.
00:26:21It's such a depressing story.
00:26:23It is.
00:26:24Because they'd really owned kind of the sporting market.
00:26:28The lightweight, handy, you know, Triumph 650s.
00:26:32They're charming.
00:26:33They're wonderful to ride.
00:26:34But they vibrated a lot.
00:26:35Light and handled well.
00:26:37Yeah.
00:26:37Yeah.
00:26:38And they sold in big numbers because they were good motorcycles.
00:26:42They did leak a little bit.
00:26:44But, you know, this is Larry Lilly, owner of Larry Lilly Honda,
00:26:49Lancaster, California, from Cycle World at the 25th anniversary.
00:26:57CB750s?
00:26:57I sold the hell out of them.
00:26:59At the time the CB750 came out, the 750 Triumph Trident also was just out.
00:27:03And there was no comparison between the two.
00:27:06The Honda was much more refined.
00:27:07Without a doubt, it was a better product.
00:27:09I sold probably 20 CB750s to every Triumph triple I sold.
00:27:13The very few diehard riders who bought the Triumph 750s, every single one of them traded it back in on a Honda.
00:27:20I was a diehard Triumph fan myself, and I hated to see it happen.
00:27:23But the British motorcycle industry had its head in the sand way too long.
00:27:27See, people who were anticipating the three-cylinder, which had been rumored for the better part of 10 years,
00:27:39what the Triumph lovers wanted to embrace, the love of their life, was going to be some kind of super Bonneville.
00:27:50It was going to be a definitive knockout blow for those built-up sportsters.
00:27:57And when it arrived, it had styling that looked as though it hadn't been influenced by anything.
00:28:05And people looked at it, and they said, what are those little pea shooter things sticking out of the mufflers?
00:28:15Well, that's a mumble mumble.
00:28:19Oh, well, good.
00:28:20It's the future.
00:28:21Yeah.
00:28:22And people called them Buck Rogers mufflers.
00:28:25We had them hanging in a back room in the dealership.
00:28:29And we also had those gas tanks because people said, can you put a Bonneville tank on this?
00:28:37Yeah.
00:28:39Okay, I want one.
00:28:40How much is it?
00:28:40I'll give you the money right now.
00:28:42Because they wanted that ugliness to be gone.
00:28:45Go.
00:28:47Out of my face.
00:28:48And years, years before, it had been proposed to Triumph Management, which, by the way, was constantly changing.
00:28:59So you weren't dealing with people who had been in the motorcycle industry all their lives and were industry veterans.
00:29:06They were some kind of holding company lieutenants and other strange beings.
00:29:15So, Bert Hopwood, who worked for everybody, he designed Norton's original post-war twin cylinder head, which still is an outstanding piece of work.
00:29:31He tried to sell Triumph on, let's build a 250 single, a 500 twin, a 750 triple, and a 1000 CC four.
00:29:44And this is before Mr. Harada was sent to eat strange American hamburgers on his 1967 tour.
00:29:52This was before it could have been done.
00:29:56It wasn't done.
00:29:57Oh, well, why would we want to do that?
00:29:59And it'll cost money.
00:30:00Oh, dear.
00:30:02And my lunch date is here.
00:30:04So can we talk about this next month?
00:30:07And anyone who's worked in business has heard these mumbles.
00:30:12And they mumbled their way to giving away the market.
00:30:17And, in fact, in some cases, when people would say, I don't like the way this model looks, they would be told, it's not your job to design motorcycles.
00:30:33We do that.
00:30:34Your job is to like them and buy them.
00:30:37Oh, I didn't understand that.
00:30:40I thought maybe the buyer had certain expectations here.
00:30:48So what the Triumph Trident was, was two cylinders of the 500 with another cylinder added on.
00:30:58And it was done in a sort of strange way so that the clutch was buried in amongst a lot of aluminum.
00:31:07And it didn't make a lot of power.
00:31:13It could because the Dick Mann won the Daytona 200 on one in 1971.
00:31:20But the choices that were made were like committee choices.
00:31:28Well, I want to do it this way.
00:31:30Well, I want to do it this way.
00:31:31Well, can't you fellows compromise?
00:31:36Compromise pleases no one.
00:31:38Okay, that's the best we can do.
00:31:39Here's your Trident.
00:31:41And I'm sorry about it because I got started with my enthusiasm for motorbikes with British stuff.
00:31:58And I only gradually was able, the rational side of me persuading the emotional side, no, look here.
00:32:09Look how they're doing it.
00:32:11This engine opens like a clam.
00:32:14There's the crankshaft, the two gearbox shafts, and the kickstart shaft.
00:32:19Just lay them in there, line up the bearing alignment rings and pins.
00:32:24Put it together.
00:32:26It's done.
00:32:28Not a lot of pushing and shoving.
00:32:32Oh, you need this extractor, special tool number such and such.
00:32:36And people were accustomed to it.
00:32:43My mentor and first motorcycle dealer claimed he had the second Triumph dealership in North America.
00:32:52Clarence Mack McConaughey of Everett, Massachusetts, had all these motorcycles in a...
00:33:07He had repair orders.
00:33:09There must have been 50 motorcycles in this one room.
00:33:13And he was grinding through it ever so slowly.
00:33:17And when he was invited to go for a Saturday ride with his friends, they would ride up on their late model Japanese bikes and Mack would be tightening bolts,
00:33:32checking fluid levels, checking tire inflation, checking, checking, as if he were going on a test flight in a prototype aircraft.
00:33:45Wait a minute.
00:33:49This industry is doing way better than that.
00:33:52You don't have to do all that silly nonsense.
00:33:54Just get on the bike, turn the key, and go.
00:33:59Well, it didn't take long for that kind of motorcycle enthusiasm to just dry up and blow away.
00:34:07Because if you're offered the difference between having a half hour more riding because your bike doesn't need all that attention and fussing around and then having to go and put on clean clothes and wash your hands before you can ride, forget it.
00:34:28I'd say for most people, yes, I agree.
00:34:31But, you know, it sounds like Mack's relationship was forged on all of that.
00:34:36But that's part of his.
00:34:37It was.
00:34:38It was.
00:34:38And for so many people, and even for me, I mean, I have the great fortune of riding a lot of modern motorcycles,
00:34:44and I even own some that could be mistaken for modern, like a 95 Ducati 900 SS or my wife's 2011 XR 1200X.
00:34:56You still, you know, dare I say Velocet, you know, lots of fiddly shims.
00:35:03You got to shim the magneto and just all the, carefully put it together, and not everything is machined flat, and you got to put sealant on everything when you're building it,
00:35:15and then go through a very specific starting procedure on the Velo as a 500 single.
00:35:21Oh, you better put that piston in just the right spot for it to start.
00:35:26Just like with Yamaha 500s that had the little window, the XT and the SR500 had a window on the camshaft with a silver dot on it,
00:35:34and you were to kick it up against compression and then move the kickstarter until you saw the silver dot.
00:35:39And then you could kickstart the bike and hopefully not have your femur end up in your armpit from kickback.
00:35:49And, like, that's part, you know, it is part of the relationship for some people, some people.
00:35:55I embraced it for a time.
00:35:56I had a 500 AHS single, and you had to pull the compression release, remove the oil cap, and push it through until you saw a little oil pule out of the return line.
00:36:11It's so true.
00:36:13That meant there is oil, and the pump is working, and the hoses haven't slipped off.
00:36:17It's what you do on a Velo.
00:36:20My oil feed has a clear hose crimped onto it so that, if it's been sitting a while, you kick it through until you see oil.
00:36:28It takes 50 kicks, just so you know, 50 kicks to get oil to come up and start to get into the cylinder head.
00:36:35But once you see the oil there, you're like, okay, I can start now.
00:36:38Yes.
00:36:3950, 50 kicks.
00:36:41So, this thing has this procedure where you position the crankshaft so that you have a maximum time in which to deliver kinetic energy from your poor leg to the crankshaft rotation so that it can make it through compression one time.
00:36:59Near enough to compression.
00:37:01Far enough away to get the momentum up, but near enough to make it through.
00:37:05Yes.
00:37:05None of this random just throwing your leg at it.
00:37:08All you CB750 owners.
00:37:11Of yesteryear.
00:37:14Did you have to press down the float depressor on the carburetor until the top of the gearbox was clean?
00:37:23No.
00:37:24The carburetor retained fuel from one use to the next.
00:37:29Yep.
00:37:29And you had a choke lever, and you could adjust the individual levers between all of them racked together so that the chokes even were synchronized.
00:37:37So, it was a change in a complete change of culture.
00:37:41The Japanese brought us turnkey motorcycling with reliability that many people at the time called boring.
00:37:52Because being at roadside and having $9.74 and no cell phone, it's sort of exciting?
00:38:01Or is it just a crashing, dreadful bore?
00:38:07Anyway.
00:38:08Well, just the desperation that you saw from British motorcycle manufacturers.
00:38:14They were producing ads at the time that showed big, burly guys, very stylish, with their triumphs.
00:38:23And it was like, basically, it was just so, it was so 1971.
00:38:28It was like, manly this, and like, you want a motorcycle that you, you know, that you could, you don't need that.
00:38:35You need this man's bike, and it's going to, you know, kick vibration.
00:38:38And it was like, it was like trying to make a feature out of its retrograde, you know, behind the times-ness.
00:38:46Yeah.
00:38:46Maybe it worked for a while.
00:38:47Well, it was with a tremendous sense of achievement that the engine might go pack and then idle.
00:38:56And you would think, I did it.
00:38:59It's running.
00:38:59Or you might kick and kick, remembering to calm down between each orgasmic effort.
00:39:11So, yes, it was a change of culture.
00:39:15Because to be an insider in motorcycling in 1960 was to embrace all of this and to understand how to operate a screwdriver without having to see a training video.
00:39:32No shit.
00:39:33This is something that happens these days because people don't grow up in a shop.
00:39:41They grow up in a child safety seat with a workbook.
00:39:47And they have to wear helmets if they're doing anything that is somewhat risky.
00:39:56Not every kid, man.
00:39:59Not every.
00:39:59No, not every.
00:40:00My son had a welding helmet when he was four.
00:40:03Good one.
00:40:08It's not auto-darkening or anything.
00:40:10You know, I got the auto-darkening helmet, but he's, he does, he had the inspector's helmet.
00:40:16But he's welded.
00:40:18Yep.
00:40:18So, people had to choose between those cultures.
00:40:25And really, it was like it says in, in the book on, on the culture of scientific revolutions, in which it says, people don't gradually change their mind and adopt the new interpretation of the data.
00:40:46They die and stop talking.
00:40:49And the people who are left, who are part of the new way of interpreting the data, are still talking.
00:40:58And that's why our collective opinion appears to change.
00:41:03But it's not change.
00:41:04It is replacement.
00:41:06Well, I want to say the, the generational marketing that Honda achieved did do something, right?
00:41:16We had, you meet the nicest people and you had all those, you had all those, yeah, all those lightweight, affordable, approachable people.
00:41:25And then images and advertising showing tennis players and sweaters and, you know, cheerful people.
00:41:33It was like it haunted.
00:41:34Yeah.
00:41:34No face, no face tattoos, no neck tattoos.
00:41:38You know, just.
00:41:38And no foamer up in your, up in your armpit.
00:41:41Right.
00:41:42And so it, it began, you know, you had those affordable, in the beginning, hardware store motorcycles.
00:41:55Meanwhile, at the Isle of Man, Honda showing up with world beating products, which you cannot buy.
00:42:04And they, they had this foundation of customer in the United States riding, you know, these things that don't puke oil, they just run their pirate RPM.
00:42:15And you brought together this GP technology and this customer base that was gradually taken up the chain and they just collided in 1969 and away we went.
00:42:27And it's, it's really at that moment, I feel like at that, that was the moment when, like the arms race began where technology drove next year's sales more than ever.
00:42:44I mean, I think, I think, go ahead.
00:42:47Because CP750 was the doorkeeper, it unleashed the flood.
00:42:56When CP750 appeared, everyone realized what the nature of the American market was.
00:43:02Next, you had Kawasaki's H1, which was the night rider's favorite ride for a very short time.
00:43:15Then, uh, you had the three cylinders, uh, 750s from Kawasaki and Suzuki in 1972 and in 73, the Z1 and in 76, the Suzuki GS series.
00:43:32So once the gates were open, it all poured through and 90 horsepower per liter.
00:43:40Forget that nonsense.
00:43:42Two valves per cylinder.
00:43:43Are you kidding me?
00:43:45It was an intense technology race and motorcycle racing was an important part of it.
00:43:55Um, but these were very civilized motorcycles.
00:44:01The thing that I was very impressed with was talking to cycle world people who'd been there at the, the basic 200 mile per hour test on their secret desert road.
00:44:13And that making the engine just sat there and that making the engine just sat there and idle, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum.
00:44:22That civilization.
00:44:24Tremendous top speed, tremendous top speed, fantastic acceleration, but you, it's not a helicopter that requires hundreds of hours of maintenance.
00:44:35So that's an accomplishment.
00:44:37So that's an accomplishment.
00:44:39And of course it was accomplished, not because people at the time in the 1960s said, well, it's cheap labor in Asia and that's the cause of it all.
00:44:52But in England, they're free men building great motorcycles.
00:44:57Well, okay.
00:44:59But in fact, what Edward Turner found when he made his 1960 trip to Japan, he came back and wrote a report basically warning them.
00:45:09These guys are coming for you and they're armed with production systems that offer low cost, no more handwork, no eight sided wireframe spectacles and peering at micrometers and scraping bearings in.
00:45:28And they just assembled these things from parts whose quality was assured by systematic analysis.
00:45:39So the British love of shims.
00:45:41I mean, honestly.
00:45:44Yeah.
00:45:45Well, it was, it was the way a foreman fitter would do things.
00:45:50And I tried to do that.
00:45:52I tried to do that with my first Kayaba fork that had Teflon bushings.
00:45:57This was 1976.
00:45:58And the thing was, I always try forks when they're empty first, because then you can feel and all sorts of stuff that oil would normally just squash out seemed terribly loose.
00:46:12So I put shim stock behind the Teflon faced bearings.
00:46:18The rider went out for first practice.
00:46:20He said, the fork's sticking down.
00:46:23Oh.
00:46:25It needs that clearance.
00:46:26When, yeah, when inverted forks came out, you had to run more, they had a lot more clearance, the inverted fork.
00:46:32And you're like, this is all wrong, you know.
00:46:34Five thousandths of an inch in there.
00:46:36And I talked, you know, I talked to guys who were building suspension at the time.
00:46:39They're like, oh no, this can't be right.
00:46:41Yeah.
00:46:41And they, they did the same thing.
00:46:43You're like, huh, well, that doesn't work at all.
00:46:46So back to the clearance.
00:46:48And away with the shims.
00:46:50Yeah.
00:46:51Because a shim, any time that you have to stop production and make a measurement, oh, well, hey, we don't have any of those shims.
00:47:03Oh, here comes a kid with a box of them now.
00:47:05That's not, that doesn't cut it anymore.
00:47:08Production line has to operate like a circulatory system.
00:47:14It serves all parts of the body and it collects nutrients for distribution.
00:47:22Everything comes to the production line and it just churns out fresh equipment.
00:47:28Lovely.
00:47:28But of course, particularly older persons such as myself may pine for the engine builder to whom they took their Harley engine every so many years.
00:47:44I knew one fellow who had his engine built every year.
00:47:50And these were people who in many cases would talk to you.
00:47:54They were full of lore.
00:47:55There was all this, you felt you were getting to know your engine well from this.
00:48:02You weren't just a person who said, I want some toast.
00:48:05Where's the toaster?
00:48:06We don't ever toast it.
00:48:07Tribal knowledge is so seductive.
00:48:09Tribal knowledge is really seductive.
00:48:11It is.
00:48:12Yes, because it becomes identity.
00:48:16It's part of the charm of my 900 SS because it has desmodromic valves and you got to shim those things.
00:48:23And I don't, I don't do that because I don't want a tackle box full of shims for one motorcycle.
00:48:29Yeah.
00:48:30And then you can read up on most of that, but there's all these little things about the ridges that wear.
00:48:37And if you just change an old shim for a new shim, it will take up the clearance and you'll be good until the next valve checking.
00:48:44And so that's where I rely on my friend Ed.
00:48:46And I take everything off the bike because that's what you do on a 900 SS is the manual just says, take off everything.
00:48:53And then also take off the shock to get it because the rear, the rear valve cover.
00:48:59And then I just let him do the deed and he brings his tackle box of shims and years of experience.
00:49:04And it's the same.
00:49:06It's, it's a little, it's just that charming bit of lore that you, you do like.
00:49:12And of course, if you do a lot of work yourself on particularly older machines, as Mark does with his beloved Velocets and other stuff, you have to learn this stuff or you're going to make a mistake.
00:49:31And of course, that's how we learn.
00:49:34You don't learn from doing things perfectly.
00:49:36And you learn from other consequences, you learn from other people's mistakes too.
00:49:42So I have an XS650 that I've been working on, which has been really fun because I've never had one.
00:49:49And you get into it and, you know, I was like, well, the clutch was slipping and it's a, you know, it's a 36,000 mile bike and it hasn't seen the greatest care in the world.
00:49:58And I, I took the clutch cover off, you know, and got in there and it has six screws holding the clutch on.
00:50:07Number, whatever they are, number three, JIS, they're the big JIS.
00:50:11They have screws, you know, it looks like a Phillips, but it's not folks.
00:50:15JIS, Japanese Industrial Standard.
00:50:17Yeah.
00:50:18And I went and got my impact driver because I tried to undo them, you know, with the straight up screwdriver, it wouldn't come out.
00:50:23Got my big honking impact driver and went, tick, and would not move.
00:50:29Dick.
00:50:29Not moving.
00:50:30I mean, tightest could be, which a spring, those are supposed to be seven foot pounds, usually seven to nine, something like that.
00:50:36And so you learn from someone else's mistakes.
00:50:38Those things were, I don't know what torque they, they had, but they were nearly impossible to get off.
00:50:44And one of the bosses in the clutch was cracked where this, where the screw would go in.
00:50:48So somebody was like, this is not coming off, but you enjoy that.
00:50:52Like, I enjoy taking this off and now I feel good because I feel like I'm making it right.
00:50:57Making it right.
00:50:58That's it.
00:50:59Yes.
00:50:59I'm making it right.
00:51:01And I'm paying attention to the details.
00:51:02I'm paying attention to the details.
00:51:04And that's what's charming about aligning a crankshaft, you know, is you're paying attention to the details and you feel like, I don't know.
00:51:18For some of us, it makes us feel special.
00:51:20It makes us feel happy that you've seen this dark place.
00:51:24Other people are like, I don't give up.
00:51:25You know, they don't want to open up an engine.
00:51:27And I completely understand that because I have, I have an appliance vehicle.
00:51:31I have lots of vehicles that require my attention, Jaguars and stuff and English Fords and, you know.
00:51:38Maybe a fire engine or two.
00:51:40Vintage everything.
00:51:42But you also have, you know, a Toyota that you just, like, I just have a 4Runner and I just changed the transmission fluid on it.
00:51:51And you just, there's a drain plug on the pan.
00:51:55You drain it.
00:51:55You take off the pan.
00:51:57There's five magnets in the pan that collect debris.
00:52:00You clean them.
00:52:01You clean the pan.
00:52:02You take the filter out.
00:52:03You put the filter in.
00:52:04Everything fits.
00:52:06You put the pan back on with a gasket and you don't have to smear anything on it.
00:52:12You don't have to, you just put the pan back on and then you torque it to, you know, whatever it is, nine foot pounds on those pan bolts and it does not leak.
00:52:20So I do the maintenance, but it doesn't require incantation.
00:52:25Yeah.
00:52:25It's just, you just do it.
00:52:27So you get, it's good to have the appliance.
00:52:29It is.
00:52:31Because, and there are people for whom the idea of getting down to the crankshaft of your engine, to them it seems like doing your own surgery.
00:52:42Yeah, it doesn't hurt that much, you know, and I got a mirror so I can always see what I'm doing.
00:52:50Are you nuts?
00:52:51I had a, well, I got to, I'm going to own up to something.
00:52:54So, um, I had a knee surgery, uh, years ago.
00:52:58I broke my knee playing soccer and, uh, I asked, I asked the doctor if I could have an epidural and I could watch the surgery on the screen.
00:53:08Cause it's arthroscopic and he's like, oh, hell yeah.
00:53:11Yeah.
00:53:12So I got an epidural and I got to be conscious during my own knee surgery and I got a tour of my knee and he's like, oh, you see that?
00:53:17That's going to be a problem later.
00:53:18See these cracks in your, you know, in your cartilage upside, but yeah, watching your own surgery.
00:53:25Cool.
00:53:26Oh, must be a pattern.
00:53:32Um, so born stroke, I was sort of curious about born stroke.
00:53:38So we, we got under square on this bike for obvious reasons.
00:53:42Um, but we really, you know, we had trended from under square way back in the day and boars just grew and grew.
00:53:51I think culminating with sort of the Ducati.
00:53:54What was that?
00:53:54One 16, is that right?
00:53:57Uh, 116 millimeter bore.
00:54:00Okay.
00:54:00Yeah.
00:54:01Yep.
00:54:01The big, big one.
00:54:03And then now we're kind of, we've dialed back from that for mostly emissions purposes, but we are seeing the parallel twins come back to a more narrow bore.
00:54:12So I feel like what's that pattern?
00:54:16The pattern was ultimate performance.
00:54:18Yeah.
00:54:19And now, and now we're, we're kind of being, you know, dialed back, getting the clean engines back.
00:54:26Well, during the, between the wars period, 1919 to 1939, um, as engines were made to rev up more, they no longer had enough valve area.
00:54:42And you couldn't put in larger valves because the cylinder bore was in the way.
00:54:47So they'd make the cylinder bore two millimeters greater.
00:54:51And then they could put in a valve that was two millimeters larger.
00:54:54And this process was quite gradual and it, it took 20 years.
00:55:00And eventually we got to these ridiculous extremes.
00:55:06But it turns out that the length of top piston ring determines the volume of a, of a space associated with the ring.
00:55:19There's volume behind the ring.
00:55:20There's volume above because combustion gas has to get in there, get behind the ring and inflate it against the cylinder wall.
00:55:29So during compression and the early stages of combustion mixture is forced into that volume and there's nothing you can do about it.
00:55:42It's in there.
00:55:43The thing fires, the peak pressure is reached after top dead center, the exhaust valves open, the pressure drops.
00:55:53But on these wonderful Schlieren photographs that MIT has made in a square cylinder engine with a quartz cylinder wall, you can see that crevice gas streaming up out of the crevice all the way through the exhaust stroke.
00:56:15It's streaming into the exhaust straight to Ann Arbor, where the EPA is located.
00:56:21Right, unburned hydrocarbons.
00:56:23I smell a rat.
00:56:24I mean, unburned hydrocarbons.
00:56:28So that is pushing back towards smaller pistons and longer strokes.
00:56:34And the market, meanwhile, is just glad that there are motorcycles with only two cylinders that they can actually afford.
00:56:44So that, and they make good power.
00:56:48Oh, they run great, yeah.
00:56:49They have a ton of compression.
00:56:50If you're not at 13.4, you're just missing the party.
00:56:57And of course, all these engines, CB750, back in those days, those air-cooled engines were all around 8.5 or 9 to 1.
00:57:05And they put pretty good-sized valves into CB750.
00:57:12What were they, 28 and, no, 30 and 28 or something.
00:57:1932 and 28.
00:57:20And then CB350 was bigger yet because it had a much larger bore and a shorter stroke.
00:57:30So these, in the beginning, we're pushed towards larger bore and shorter stroke by the need for more valve area in order to make more power.
00:57:41And at first, that was only for racing.
00:57:44But when British twins reached the U.S. market, there was a commercial horsepower race, which meant either you had to rev the thing up or you had to jack up the compression or you had to increase the displacement.
00:57:59Something to satisfy, to slink the horsepower thirst of Americans.
00:58:06Yeah, the origin of the commando.
00:58:10Yeah.
00:58:10And, you know, more displacement, great, great chamber.
00:58:15Pretty good compression.
00:58:16Good fast combustion.
00:58:17Good fast combustion.
00:58:18And then it shook so much, they had to find a way to quell that.
00:58:24And they did it with isolastics.
00:58:26Yep.
00:58:26The Japanese came in with a four-cylinder and obliterated all of that.
00:58:32Yeah.
00:58:33They made an end run around that.
00:58:35They did something conceptually different.
00:58:38So CB750, I think of it as the gatekeeper that opened a new pathway to performance, which was four cylinders, rising RPM.
00:58:53See, a Triumph Bonneville in the mid-60s was peaking at 6,500 RPM, whereas CB750 is peaking at 8,500 or 9,000.
00:59:06And the thing about RPM is it makes more power because it performs the power-producing cycle more times per minute.
00:59:15So therein lay part of the secret of CB750, that with moderate compression, moderate-sized valves, not pushing it anywhere except to turn the RPM that would be easy for an engine with that stroke.
00:59:36They made 67 horsepower to the Triumph Trident's 58.
00:59:42And CB750 was no lightweight.
00:59:47With all fluids, it was around 500 pounds.
00:59:51But it had the rocket engines to push it along the road.
00:59:57Yep.
00:59:57And it had torque as well.
00:59:59That was the thing.
01:00:00Because of the moderate tuning, it was really tractable.
01:00:03And it just continued to pull, you know, especially compared to a twin.
01:00:07It had a kind of a haystack torque curve that had a definite peak, but it didn't slope down very rapidly on either side.
01:00:17So you had 80% of peak torque from 2750 up to just short of 9,000.
01:00:24So you could get some work done within a range like that.
01:00:29But the five-speed gearbox was a classic in that it had quite a low first ratio to get all that weight, possibly with a passenger.
01:00:40And the rider might be a portly person as well.
01:00:45To heave that all into motion.
01:00:47And then the top four ratios were like a close ratio gearbox.
01:00:51So it was a new way to reach higher performance.
01:01:00The Japanese had developed production equipment that had low per unit cost.
01:01:08So we could all have one for $14.95.
01:01:14Yeah.
01:01:14Just delightful.
01:01:16I wish I'd had $14.95 then, but I didn't.
01:01:19So, yeah, you mentioned Bob Hansen, National Service Training Manager for Honda at the time, pushing for the bike.
01:01:29And here comes the bike.
01:01:31And Hansen was into racing.
01:01:34Yeah.
01:01:35And we got a Daytona 1970 CR750.
01:01:41Tell us about that.
01:01:42Well, Hansen realized that this was a Daytona 200 winner.
01:01:49And when you win the Daytona 200 in those days, people went promptly to the dealership.
01:01:58Well, I've been trying to make up my mind and you've made it up for me.
01:02:02Here I am.
01:02:03And here's the money.
01:02:03And it wasn't difficult to make the 90 horsepower at 9700 that were claimed for this engine, the CR engine.
01:02:17Bunch more valve timing, greater lift, probably oversized valves a little bit.
01:02:23And they had a winner in potential.
01:02:31So, Bob Hansen, his title has the word service in it.
01:02:37And that may have been crucial.
01:02:39Because when Dick Mann had completed preliminary practice and they made the first oil drain, there were black bits in the oil.
01:02:52And probably Bob Hansen had seen them before.
01:02:57He knew that they were from the chain, cam chain tensioner rollers, of which there were more than one.
01:03:05And so, the engine was torn down and any oil passage that existed was blown out and cleared with a wire to make sure that the classic failure didn't occur.
01:03:19So many aircraft engines had been changed, but nobody changed the oil cooler, which was full of crap.
01:03:28So, they cleaned it out, put it together, fresh oil.
01:03:33We're not running this anymore.
01:03:35So, in the race, one of the bikes, there were four bikes that were sent over with magnesium cases and 4130 aircraft tubing instead of the mild steel production material.
01:03:50And they burned one of them up in practice.
01:03:58And of the other two, one of them went four laps and the other one went 12 laps.
01:04:05And Dick Mann's bike kept running and it kept running.
01:04:11And he got in the lead.
01:04:13Oh, it looks like Gene Romero is catching him.
01:04:16Well, will he catch him?
01:04:17Well, that's racing, isn't it?
01:04:19We're excited because we don't know what the outcome is going to be.
01:04:24And in the end, Mann won it.
01:04:28And immediately, the cam chain tensioning system failed and it was a good thing that hadn't happened five minutes earlier.
01:04:37And I was party to something that might add, might shed some light on this or it might not.
01:04:47I just don't know.
01:04:49But in 2020, I got sent to Japan to look at the new Fireblade 1000cc engine.
01:04:55And the engineer told me, in early development, we ran the cam chain, and this is a silent chain by this time.
01:05:06We wrapped it around the crankshaft sprocket.
01:05:11And then it went to the double size camshaft gears.
01:05:16And he said, we broke chains.
01:05:19We broke side plates.
01:05:21We couldn't stop it from breaking them.
01:05:23We tried all kinds of things with the tensioners, the chain dampers.
01:05:30And finally, someone said, let's put a gear on the crankshaft and a halftime gear directly above it with the cam sprocket, with a chain sprocket.
01:05:45So they slowed the chain down.
01:05:48They didn't wrap it tight around the crankshaft as the prototype had been, and they had a reliable setup.
01:05:55So my thought is, what if the tight wrap of the chain and the problem with the tensioners did not appear at a stock RPM and highway and city duty cycle, which is not buzzing around Daytona.
01:06:18So it could be that at 9,700 peak RPM, that the chain was vibrating unbelievably, because when the chain wraps around a small sprocket, and it's about 17 teeth, it is like you're riding on a wheel with 17 sides.
01:06:42It's not comfortable, because as the chain runs onto the sprocket.
01:06:49You see that the pins of the chain form a polygon, not a circle, a polygon with 17 sides.
01:06:59And the chain running onto that is rising and falling ever so slightly.
01:07:04And what if that frequency of rise and fall corresponded with some quality of the tensioner rollers?
01:07:16Anyway, it generated black bits.
01:07:19The black bits went into the oil pump screen.
01:07:22And no more oil or something.
01:07:27So ever since I made that 2020 trip, I've had this in the back of my mind.
01:07:36What if that was the problem?
01:07:41So interesting stuff.
01:07:44Interesting stuff.
01:07:45Well, that's the Honda CB750, folks.
01:07:49Thanks for listening.
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